What it does

Two old PBX favourites. Call park puts a call on hold against a numeric code so anyone in the same park group can pick it up from another device by entering that code. Group call pickup (Teams calls it a call group) lets a user's inbound calls ring or notify a defined set of colleagues, who can answer on that user's behalf.

Key facts

• Call park is off by default. It's controlled by a call park policy: New-, Set-, Get-, Grant- and Remove-CsTeamsCallParkPolicy, with -AllowCallPark, -PickupRangeStart, -PickupRangeEnd and -ParkTimeoutSeconds.
• Park codes default to the range 10–99 and can be set anywhere from 10 to 9999. Codes increment by one per parked call and wrap round to the start of the range when they reach the end.
• Ringback timeout is 120–1800 seconds, default 300. An unretrieved call rings back the person who parked it.
• Users must be Enterprise Voice enabled and assigned a call park policy. Only users on the same call park policy can retrieve each other's parked calls — retrieval fails across different policies.
• Call park needs Teams Only mode and isn't supported on Skype for Business IP phones.
• Group call pickup is configured per user on their call answering rules (Teams admin center > Users > Voice tab > Manage call group), or with Set-CsUserCallingSettings -CallGroupTargets ... -CallGroupOrder InOrder|Simultaneous plus a forwarding type of Group.
• One call group per owner, up to 25 members per group, and a user can be a member of up to 25 call groups. More than five members forces simultaneous ("everyone at once") ringing.
• Each member gets a notification type: Ring (default), Banner or Mute. Mobile only honours ring and banner; SIP devices only honour ring and mute.
• Call groups need a Teams Phone licence for everyone involved, Teams Only mode, and the calling policy setting AllowCallGroups.
• Common area phones can use both features once advanced calling is enabled on the device's configuration profile.

When to use / skip

Call park earns its keep in places with a tannoy and people on the move: warehouses, hospitals, retail, schools, car dealerships. Someone answers on the front desk, parks the call, pages "call for Dave on 12", and Dave picks it up on the nearest Teams phone. If the client has no paging culture and everyone carries their own device, they'll use transfer instead and park will go unused.

Group call pickup is right for small teams who cover each other's phones — a partner and two secretaries, a small office where whoever's free answers. Once it grows beyond a handful of people or needs queueing, reporting, or out-of-hours handling, you want a call queue instead. The 25-member cap and forced simultaneous ring past five members tell you where Microsoft thinks the line is.

Configuration decisions

• Park code range per site. Separate call park policies per site give each site its own pool and stop someone in Leeds retrieving a Bristol call — but they also stop legitimate cross-site retrieval.
• Code range width: two-digit codes are easy to page; wider ranges only matter in very busy sites.
• Ringback timeout: shorter for busy front desks, longer where staff have to walk across a site.
• Which users are call group owners, and which members get ring vs banner vs mute.
• Ring order: in order (up to five members) or simultaneous.
• Whether call groups are set centrally via PowerShell for migrated pickup groups, or left to users.

Gotchas

• Users on different call park policies can't retrieve each other's calls, and the failure isn't obvious to the person trying. When you split policies by site, tell people.
• Park codes cycle, so they're not stable. Don't let anyone build a process around "use code 15 for deliveries".
• Group call pickup in Teams is owner-centric — it's the owner's calls that reach the group. Legacy PBX pickup groups (any member can pick up any other member's ringing call) don't map one-to-one; you may need several call groups to reproduce one old pickup group.
• Banner notifications are suppressed on SIP devices, so members on basic SIP phones will either ring or be silent — there's no middle ground.
• Large call groups force simultaneous ringing, which surprises owners who wanted a hunt order.
• Call park on common area phones needs advanced calling switched on in the device configuration profile, and a call park policy assigned to the account. Both, not one.

Consultant notes

• During discovery, ask for the old PBX's park orbit and pickup group configuration, and whether anyone actually uses them. Usage is often far lower than the configuration suggests.
• Build call park policies by site and assign them with group-based policy assignment tied to location groups.
• For PBX pickup groups, design the Teams call groups per owner and script them with Set-CsUserCallingSettings; don't expect users to recreate them.
• Test retrieval from the actual devices in use — desk phones, common area phones and mobile — before cutover.

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Check after the next Teams phone firmware cycle whether park and call group behaviour on SIP and common area phones has caught up with the desktop client